Book 2: Chapter 67: Bad News
Howard
December 2210
HIP 14101
HIP 14101 was a bit of a bust. Nice sun, nice spectral lines, but nothing orbiting it worth talking about. A Jovian had managed to set up shop at the outer edge of the comfort zone, leaving no space for any terrestroid planets.
I was having a good time investigating it, though. According to WikiBob, no one had yet given a gas giant anything more than the standard cursory once-over. Okay, granted, they’re hard to colonize. But still.
Adapting the drones to operate inside the atmosphere of the Jovian was a constant headache—a game of Whack-a-Mole, as Original Bob would have said. I would get a little deeper in with each new prototype, but I was losing about one in three. But there was lots of metal in this system, and I had all the time in the world.
I was relaxing out on the patio when a ding indicated an incoming message. I popped it up and started to read.
It was another update from Dexter. More about the colonies, several new cities, population up over a million, space industries, yadda yadda.
Oh.